Sights for accurately placing a projectile (such as an arrow) into a target have evolved from ones using instinct and practice to very complex mechanical devices. For example, in primitive archery, a bow was very simple and had a limited effective range. The use of a device to aim the bow was not needed. As materials and design became better and bows became capable of much faster arrow speeds and range, sighting devices became popular. Prior art sights share come common features: they have a rear peep sight mounted in the bowstring or a rear sight mounted to the bow, and they use these rear sights to align with a front sight to aim at the target. An example of a rear sight reference is a peep sight woven into the bowstring. Without wishing to limit the present invention to any theory or mechanism, it is believed that the configuration with the peep sight woven into the bowstring may present challenges, for example the small aperture may cause difficulty in seeing targets in low-light settings. And, it may cause the eye to have to focus at three ranges: just in front of the eyeball, at the front sight, and at the target some yards away. The use of multiple reference points may lead to inaccuracies (e.g., one or more of the reference points end up out of focus). In some cases, the front sight has multiple pins stacked vertically. These sights may cause the archer to move the drawn anchor position to view the pins for different ranges. Other types of sights have a single sight line but with multiple reference points, wherein the sight line is moved vertically to compensate for different ranges (see FIG. 1 showing an example of the prior art), e.g., to compensate for distance or a movable front sight that can be placed at the correct height for the range. While these may be effective for a single range or narrow set of distances, they may present challenges because of the large movement of the sight required to compensate for the trajectory of an arrow.
There have been attempts to have a better sight line in archery. Some examples include peep sights for bowstrings that have multiple apertures spaced apart to allow the front sights to be used at multiple ranges. With this type of sight, the archer must move the shooting stance and anchor point of the bow at full draw, which can result in inaccuracy.
Many attempts to allow the use of a front and rear sight mounted to the handle as opposed to using a peep sight as the rear sight reference have been introduced. These often do not provide the alignment of the sight line to the archers eyeball over a large range of distance settings. Some have a movable rear sight and some have a movable front sight. These are usually movable with a parallelogram style, pivot, or vertical, adjustment (Examples are the fine line rear sight by ProMaster™ and the Hind Sight™ by Precision Sighting Systems.)
There are also numerous sights that allow for rifle sights, telescopic sight or holographic sights to be used in archery. They can be used in one narrow range such as a target shooting at a specific yardage, but oftentimes these do not allow the sight to be used over a range of distances without the movement of the sight causing the misalignment of the sight line between the archers eye and the target so significantly that the archers anchor point at full draw and stance are greatly affected compromising accuracy (e.g., Messer Optics,™ Opti-Mount™).
The present invention features a sight system. The system of the present invention is capable of moving along an arced track along a radius that approximates the distance between an archers eyeball. The arc described is a portion of the radius that includes the portion needed to position the sight accurately to compensate for an arrow's trajectory from the shortest to longest range that the bow is capable of. The present invention may eliminate the need for a peep sight because the front and rear reference points are attached and rotate about the arc together, allowing the archer to maintain proper shooting position (to improve accuracy). Additionally, the present invention will allow the use of any type of sight from traditional rifle sights to modern holographic sights, telescopic sights or pins because matching the arc of rotation of the sight to the distance from the sight to the archers eyeball may eliminate the need for large vertical movement of the archer's drawn shooting position and anchor point to compensate for longer ranges. It will provide a simple, easy to use sight with great accuracy. Without wishing to limit the present invention to any theory or mechanism, unlike prior art sights, the present invention results in a sight line that is expected to always align perfectly with an archer's eye.
The invention will comprise a mounting system to a bow with a mechanism allowing the mounted sight line to move along the arced track such that the sight line is expected to always align perfectly with the archer's eye and the target (see FIG. 5). Note that other sights do not allow a perfect alignment with the archer's eye throughout the range of the bow; they cause the archer to move the bow substantially from the proper shooting position and anchor point during full draw to align the sight with the target.
In some embodiments, the sight line is movable both for and aft perpendicular to the tangent of the arc as long range shooters will want a longer sight line moved forward for increased accuracy at long ranges. Hunters on the other hand may want a more compact sight line for carrying a bow in the brush.
Oftentimes the prior art sights (regardless of type) are made in a “one size fits all bows and archers” configuration. Because archers vary in stature, the arc track of the present invention may be made to be adjustable in sizes to accommodate all archers. In some embodiments the radius of the arced track and/or the pivot mounting may be made to vary in sizes. In some embodiments, the varying radius arcs along with adjustment in the mounting to the bow handle can accommodate any size archer or draw length.
Without wishing to limit the present invention to any theory or mechanism, it is believed that prior art designs can be set up to align perfectly with the archers eye at one distance but the sight line can deviate with changing the position of the sight to accommodate a large range of distances. Sights have been made to have many styles of pivots and adjustments to move the sights, but they cannot simulate the movement along the arc track on the present invention. The present invention can be made to follow a track or use multiple pivots to simulate the arced movement.
The sight system of the present invention is not limited to archery (e.g., bow, crossbow) applications. In some embodiments, the sight system of the present invention can be adapted for rifles and guns, slingshot systems, toys, or any other appropriate projectile-launching system.
Further, with the present invention, any appropriate type of sighting device can be used such as iron rifle sights, telescopic sights, holographic sights or typical pin sights used in archery (e.g., using the present invention, it does matter which type of sight is used because the sight line will theoretically be perfectly aligned to the archers eye.